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Toqueville on Muslims; Peters on Toqueville; Taranto on Peters
Alexis de Toqueville wrote:
I studied the Koran a great deal … I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. As far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world, and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion infinitely more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.Toqueville saw Islam itself as a problem—as a religion that is deadly to men, that is the principal cause of Muslim decadence, and that is greatly to be feared. Therefore, according to Ralph Peters, Toqueville was a man whose “personal disappointments left him with a need to blame others,” an “Islam-hater” who believed “all Muslims are evil and subhuman,” a “bigot wanted to try to kill all Muslims.”
And if Ralph Peters wrote an article in the New York Post saying these things about Toqueville, James Taranto would write a column in the Wall Street Journal praising Peters for his “eloquent” discussion of the “anti-Muslim bigot” Toqueville. Email entry |